Asylum

09.15.12

Assange Given Aboriginal Passport

Greg Wood, AFP / Getty Images

In a show of solidarity on Saturday, the Indigenous Social Justice Association, an Australian activist group, held a ceremony in Sydney offering Australian Julian Assange an Aboriginal passport. The WikiLeaks founder's father, who says his son has been "abandoned" by Australian authorities, was on hand to accept the passport, which will be sent to Assange in the Ecuadorean embassy in London. The group that issued the passport is an activist association pushing for the recognition of Aboriginal sovereignty, a cause Assange backs. But the passport is merely symbolic: the current Australian government has still made no moves.